Three minutes.
That was all they had.
The Rose Unicorn landed beside Mira in a single graceful drop, its coat catching the early morning light and scattering it in deep rose-pink. Even standing still, it radiated the contained energy of something that could cross a battlefield in seconds.
Fifth rank, approaching sixth. In raw cultivation terms, Rose sat at the peak of Grand Knight level — stronger than any individual in this group by a significant margin. Having her in the fight didn’t guarantee anything against a genuine fifth-rank demon. But it changed the math enough to make the attempt worth making.
Mira swung onto Rose’s back without a word.
Liora had steadied herself. The pale look was gone, replaced by the focused expression of someone who had made a decision about what had happened and filed it somewhere to deal with later. Her Eagle Eye was still running, the construct circling high above them.
"Three minutes," she said again. "Maybe less."
Leo looked at the group.
Five people. Three vocations. No healer, no priest, no detection specialist beyond what Liora’s magic could provide. First time working together in a real fight.
He wasn’t going to pretend that was ideal. But it was what they had.
"Listen," he said. "There’s something you need to know before this starts."
Everyone looked at him.
"The ability I used to redirect the Dyke Clan assassin — the white light from my chest. That was my Spiritual Stove." A pause. "The Lodestar Stove. It has a pulling effect on nearby souls — enemies lock onto it instead of their original target. When I activate it, everything in range wants to come at me."
Silence.
Liora’s eyes had gone very still. She was the consul’s daughter — she understood what a Spiritual Stove meant better than any of them. She understood, in that moment, exactly what had saved her life in the last fight.
Mira stared at him from Rose’s back. When she finally spoke, her voice was a very controlled version of something much louder.
"You," she said, "have been carrying a Spiritual Stove this entire time and didn’t tell your big sister."
"Master Kessel said not to reveal it until—"
"We are going to have a very long conversation after this demon is dead." She pointed at him. "A very. Long. Conversation."
"Understood."
Darius and Caden exchanged a look. A fourteen-year-old Grand Knight with a Spiritual Stove — there wasn’t a version of that sentence that didn’t sound completely unreasonable. And yet here he was, standing in front of a fifth-rank demon’s approach path, looking calmer than either of them felt.
Caden opened his mouth.
"Don’t," Darius said quietly.
Caden closed it.
Leo turned to Darius. "I’ll use Divine Obstruction to tank the hits. But there’s a recovery window after each block — I need a second or two to focus before I can use it again. That’s where you come in." He met Darius’s eyes directly. "Fill that gap. You don’t need to stop it completely, just slow it down enough for me to reset. If our timing holds, my energy won’t run out before the others break through."
Darius looked at him for a moment. The kind of look that means someone is quietly recalibrating everything they thought they knew about a person.
Then he nodded. Short, certain. "I’ll hold the gap."
"Caden, Mira — you’re the damage. Hit it hard the moment Darius and I have it locked. Don’t hold anything back." He glanced at Liora. "Liora, rear support. Keep your Eagle Eye running as long as you can and call out anything you see. If you get an opening for a clean hit, take it."
Liora nodded once.
Leo looked at his light sword. The blade caught the sunrise and reflected it back in pale gold.
His father’s voice, very clear in his memory: *Real battles are where you grow fastest. Not training. Not sparring. The real thing.*
He’d never fully understood that until the last few hours.
"One more thing," he said. "The Lodestar Stove drains my internal energy recovery by roughly twenty percent while it’s active. I can’t keep it running indefinitely." He looked at each of them. "So be fast."
---
The formation held.
Liora pulled back to the rear. Mira positioned Rose on the left flank, the unicorn’s hooves already restless on the ground. Caden moved to the right, both fire blades out, the faint warmth of their enchantments already bleeding into the morning air. Darius stepped up beside Leo, tower shield raised, not a trace of doubt in his posture.
Leo stood at the front.
He closed his eyes.
Inside his chest, the Lodestar Stove pulsed — warm, steady, patient. He could feel it the way you feel a fire in the room without looking at it. The internal energy around it moved differently when it was active, slightly slower, like water thickening in cold. Twenty percent drain. He’d need to be precise.
He opened his eyes.
The Dark Green Dual-Bladed Demon was visible now.
It had come over the last rise and was crossing the open ground toward them at a speed that made the distance seem trivial. Three meters tall, hunched forward, its four main legs driving into the earth with each stride hard enough to leave visible impressions. The winged shell on its back spread slightly as it ran — not for flight, just balance, stabilizing a body that mass at that speed would otherwise topple.
The forelegs were the worst part.
Both raised in front of its face, each one a meter and a half of dense muscle ending in three blades — the longest half a meter, the others stepping down from there. Six blades total, all of them glowing with that deep olive-green light that meant they weren’t just bone or chitin. They were weapons the demon had grown rather than made, and they were humming.
It was already roaring before it reached the hundred-meter mark.
"Pathetic humans. You killed my soldiers." The voice was deep enough to feel in the chest. "I’ll tear you apart."
Leo activated the Lodestar Stove.
The white light bloomed from his chest — soft, almost gentle-looking, completely at odds with what it did. The demon felt it immediately. Even at a hundred meters, even at that speed, it registered the pull. Its eyes — all three of them, the third set above the natural pair — locked onto Leo.
And it charged.
Twenty meters closed in a single bound.
The ground shook when it landed.
Fifteen more, and it was close enough that Leo could see the individual blade-edges catching the sun.
Leo didn’t move.
*Now.*
"Ice Spear!"
The spell hit first.
Four lances of deep blue screamed in from behind Leo — Liora’s casting, timed perfectly, the ice hardening into solid two-meter shafts mid-flight. They struck the demon’s carapace in a spread pattern across its chest and left shoulder.
The demon didn’t stop.
But it flinched. A fraction. The charge angled two degrees left.
Two degrees was enough.
The first foreleg came down where Leo had been standing. The Daybright Aegis was already there.
*Divine Obstruction.*
— *DONG* —
The impact was enormous. Leo felt it from his wrist to his spine, the force spreading through his whole body and dispersing through the skill’s golden light rather than through his bones. He didn’t go backward. His feet stayed exactly where they were.
The demon’s foreleg bounced off.
It looked down at him.
For one fraction of a second, something that might have been surprise passed across its lizard-wide face.
Then it swung the other foreleg.
Leo was already resetting — pulling his energy back to center, feeling the Obstruction recharge — and that was the window.
Darius stepped in.
The tower shield intercepted the second foreleg with a crash that rang across the open ground, and Darius dug in, both feet planted, the impact absorbing through his legs and into the earth. He didn’t block it cleanly — it was too strong for that — but he deflected it wide, the blades scoring across the shield’s surface without finding purchase.
One second. Leo had one second.
He used it.
Both sides of the group hit simultaneously.
Mira came in from the left on Rose’s back, the Rose Unicorn moving at a speed that seemed impossible for its size, and *Instant Blast Cross Cut* came down in a blazing red X across the demon’s left flank. The blades found a gap between two carapace plates and went in.
The demon screamed.
Caden hit from the right in the same moment — *Whirlwind Strike*, twin fire blades spinning in a vortex of orange-white heat, driving into the demon’s right side. The fire attribute reacted with the carapace and burned.
The demon screamed again, louder.
It reared back — all three eyes blazing green — and both forelegs swept outward in a wide horizontal arc, the kind of move that had nothing to do with precision and everything to do with clearing the space around it.
"Down!" Leo shouted.
Everyone dropped.
The blades passed over them — close enough that Leo felt the displaced air across the back of his neck.
The demon’s momentum carried it half a step forward.
Leo stood back up.
His golden eyes were absolutely calm.
He raised the light sword.
*Bright Vengeance. Light Thorn.*
Both skills loaded into the blade at once, the gold aura that had been building since the fight started pouring in from every direction and compressing into the edge. The sword blazed — genuinely blazed, bright enough to cast shadows behind them in full daylight.
He brought it down on the demon’s exposed left foreleg.
The blade went through the first layer of carapace.
The demon roared and pulled back, green fluid seeping from the cut, and in the space that retreat created —
Rose descended from above.
Mira had taken the unicorn up during the sweep, and now she came back down with everything — *Shining Sunlight Strike*, both blades extended, the red-gold energy of the technique concentrated into a single falling point aimed at the back of the demon’s neck.
The impact threw the demon to the ground.
It hit hard. The earth cratered. Green fluid sprayed in an arc across the frost.
For three seconds, nothing moved.
Then the demon pushed itself up on two of its main legs.
Still alive.
Still moving.
But slower. And bleeding from three separate wounds, the carapace cracked across its chest and left flank, one foreleg dragging where Leo’s sword had cut through the joint.
It looked at Leo.
Leo looked back.
"Again," he said quietly.
Behind him, he heard four weapons come back up.